[1434] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Chronicle article: Sometimes Courses Can't Be 'Enjoyable'
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Walter Holland)
Tue Jul 29 13:58:07 2003
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 12:53:35 -0400
From: Walter Holland <mr_mole@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education
(http://chronicle.com) was forwarded to you from:
mr_mole@mit.edu
The following message was enclosed:
Of indirect relevance to a conversation about teaching at MIT,
we have an article about 'fun' in learning. The author's
claim? Basically: no pain, no gain. Looks like the humanities
are catching up to 6.002?
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This article is available online at this address:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i47/47b00501.htm
- The text of the article is below -
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From the issue dated 8/1/2003
Sometimes Courses Can't Be 'Enjoyable'
By MIKITA BROTTMAN
Last fall, for the first time, I taught an undergraduate
course I'd entitled "Understanding Suicide." Through an
unfortunate accident of scheduling, the class was held late in
the evening, from 7 to 9:45 p.m., in an airless basement
classroom with no windows. The setting seemed to create an
appropriate mood. Over the semester, I guided 18 students
(eventually, only 12) through a series of difficult, often
cheerless texts that describe and analyze the disturbing
phenomenon of suicide. We studied attitudes toward suicide in
different times and cultures, from ancient Rome to modern
Japan. We read Durkheim's Suicide and Camus's "The Myth of
Sisyphus"; we listened to a tape of Sylvia Plath reading her
last poems; we discussed the pros and cons of euthanasia, and
watched movies like Robert Bresson's gloomy existential
treatise The Devil, Probably.
The course was offered as an academic elective for art
students, and those who had enrolled in the class, I soon
discovered, had a variety of reasons for doing so. One young
woman told me she wanted help understanding the death of her
best friend, who had committed suicide the previous summer.
Some came from families with a history of mental illness. Some
had attempted suicide themselves. One student disappeared from
class halfway through the course. It turned out that he
suffered from manic depression, and had been institutionalized
after experiencing a psychotic episode (he returned to class
with his head shaved from the electroshock treatment). I
intended the course to be challenging and rigorous, but I
hoped it would also prove enlightening, especially for the
gifted, creative artists who make up the student body at the
Maryland Institute College of Art. As a result, when reading
my teaching evaluations for the course, I was slightly
disturbed to discover that one of them had described it as
"great fun."
Perhaps, I thought, this was simply the student's somewhat
inarticulate way of explaining that he'd found the course
exhilarating and eye-opening, or perhaps that he appreciated
watching movies in class and talking a lot about American pop
culture (I remember that he was especially animated during a
discussion about the death of Kurt Cobain). The expectation
that successful classes will also be "entertaining" may be so
widespread that students can conceive of no other paradigm
with which to frame their positive education experiences. Or
perhaps this student did, in fact, find the course "fun," in a
ghoulish, cemetery-tour sort of way. If so, then I regard
myself as having failed, at least as far as this young man was
concerned. My main objective in the course was to help the
students begin to think about some of the most fundamental --
though perhaps the most bleak -- questions confronting human
consciousness, such as why some of us elect not to go on with
our lives.
Most challenging university courses can be made enjoyable, of
course, by a gifted teacher. Still, it seems to me that there
are certain fields of inquiry -- mostly, but not all, in areas
of the humanities -- which, if they are well taught, should be
anything but fun: a literature class on Greek tragedy, for
example, or a history class that examines the Holocaust, or a
philosophy course on the writing of Schopenhauer. Such
classes, if successful, should motivate students to think
about some very profound and important questions -- about
evil, about consciousness, about the human condition -- which,
while in many ways rewarding, should lead to the kind of
enlightenment that is sobering rather than pleasurable.
Eventually, students may come to understand the role played by
such questions in human existence, and that understanding may
lead to a form of pleasure. But if such courses are taught
well, there will be little immediate gratification.
Disillusionment is a more likely outcome, in the short term at
least.
For the last four years, I have also taught an undergraduate
course called "Apocalypse Culture" -- another class that, if
successful, should be anything but "great fun." We begin by
studying the Books of Daniel and Revelation, and go on to
consider some of the many ways in which the end of the world
has been depicted -- in art, literature, and contemporary
popular culture. My main aim in the class is to try to get my
students to make sense of the eschatological impulse in
American culture, from Pentecostal evangelism to Hollywood's
multiple versions of Armageddon. Of course, there are always
some light moments; it's hard to keep a straight face when
looking at some of the more bizarre contemporary illustrations
of the rapture, in which the righteous are suddenly whisked
skyward, leaving neat piles of clothes scattered around
suburban lawns. On the whole, however, it is a very serious
course, developed not only to introduce students to the
apocalyptic imperative in American culture, but to familiarize
them with some of history's more destructive and violent
episodes. I require students in this class to read some very
disturbing texts, including Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of
Darkness and The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosinski's horrifying
account of human brutality during the Second World War.
It is not only in the humanities that one finds areas of
learning that, if well taught, should not be much "fun."
Medical residents, for example, are subjected to notoriously
exhausting shifts, partly -- at least in theory -- to help
inoculate them against their patients' individual suffering.
Although it has become increasingly controversial in recent
years, the boot-camp-like experience of being on call for 36
hours straight is supposed to toughen the young physician.
Without it, many argue, the doctor's ability to cope with the
anxiety, frustration, and seeming chaos of the hospital ward
would be undermined. Somewhat similarly, students of mortuary
science are generally required to take courses in topics like
thanatology and grief counseling, which prepare them to deal
with handling human corpses and face the anguish of bereaved
relatives.
Clearly, there is a great deal of sense to this: An
overemotional doctor would be as impractical as a weepy or
squeamish mortician. But in nonvocational humanities courses,
where there is nothing "practical" at stake beyond pure
intellectual inquiry, there is little that compels educators
to offer courses dealing with the more dismal aspects of the
human condition. After all, many students expect their courses
to be in some way entertaining, and it's a lot easier for
professors to meet that expectation by designing courses on
subjects that are in themselves considered pleasurable and
uplifting. In addition, many professors may have a natural
fear that, by asking their students to read depressing texts,
they themselves may be considered depressing, even dislikable
people. As we all know, positive student evaluations are an
important criterion in the tenure process, and for a faculty
member to risk teaching courses that students find painful or
miserable is to risk those same students' "blaming the
messenger" for the resultant feelings of unease.
Looking back at my own days as a student, there were plenty of
courses I found "fun," plenty of lectures I never wanted to
end. The most enjoyable of those courses tended to be taught
by professors who were also great performers, whose lectures
were often vehicles for the display of their captivating,
charismatic personalities. In retrospect, however, I realize
that although I remember those professors clearly, I don't
recall much of what I learned under their guidance. In fact, I
see now that the teachers whose classes had the greatest
influence on me were those I didn't find particularly
enjoyable at the time.
In an essay published in The Journal of Educational Sociology
in 1941, Mortimer J. Adler argued that "the practices of
educators, even if they are well-intentioned, who try to make
learning less painful than it is, not only make it less
exhilarating, but also weaken the will and minds of those upon
whom this fraud is perpetrated." Adler, founder of the Great
Books program, believed that all genuine learning involves
some degree of suffering. "Unless we acknowledge that every
invitation to learning can promise pleasure only as the result
of pain," he argued, "... all of our invitations to learning
... will be as much buncombe as the worst patent medicine
advertising."
Perhaps Adler overstates his case a little. There are many
university courses that can be insightful and challenging
while also being vastly enjoyable. Many of my students report
getting great pleasure from courses in film history, popular
culture, children's literature, and modern comedy, to name but
a few examples. In courses like "Understanding Suicide" and
"Apocalypse Culture," however, "enjoyment" is usually out of
place, if only because the most sobering aspects of the human
condition are not easy to come to terms with.
In situations like these, the teacher should best be
considered an equivalent to the understanding but necessarily
remote psychoanalyst, whose insight into the patient's
condition derives from a lack of emotional involvement in the
case. Or perhaps teachers should consider themselves analogous
to priests, whose distance from the flock is an important
condition of their elevated position; lively sermons may be
acceptable from time to time, but most of the congregation
would look with suspicion on a priest whose services have a
reputation for always being "fun."
My favorite comparison for the teacher of such courses,
however, is to the psychopomp -- the shamanic leader who acts
as a mediator between the spirit and the realm of the dead.
The psychopomp orients her charges so that they can safely
embark upon the next level of existence. The spirits may
eventually appreciate their guide's expertise -- but the
journey is unlikely to be fun.
Mikita Brottman is a professor of liberal arts at the Maryland
Institute College of Art. She is the editor of Car Crash
Culture (Palgrave, 2002).
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Copyright 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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